Category Archives: Indie game of the week

All that talk of Diablo III earlier in the week has made us reminisce about the good old days of the dungeon crawler RPG, before fancy graphics and big budgets. This has brought us to an indie game that should be firmly in the heart of anyone who has a soft spot for collecting treasure and levelling up. Legends of Yore is a top-down RPG, with the graphical styling and controls of a game made for the original NES console.

Choosing one of three character types (archer, warrior or wizard), players make their way in the world, interacting with NPCs and completing quests for gold coins and experience points. With enough experience points you get to level up and gain new skills, as well as buy new weapons and armour when you get enough gold. The quests generally consist of exploring dungeons and killing enough of a certain monster, rescuing someone, or defeating a boss.

While this may sound fairly run of the mill, the game is very addictive, and there are a number of things to keep you coming back to it. The developer has split the game world up into continents, which you can only cross when you have enough money and experience. Players can also get their hands on a number of different pets, starting out with a chicken or monkey, which can help out by attacking enemies, and which can also be levelled up. It’s these little touches which make the game something you’ll want to come back to.

To make things even more addictive, the game can literally be played anywhere. As well as a standalone PC download, it is available through a browser and for the iPhone and Android platforms. All your progress is stored on a central server, so you can play at home, and then carry on playing during your daily commute. Just don’t blame us if you wonder where your day has gone!

If you paid attention in religious education classes in school, you might be slightly surprised at the name of this week’s indie game, whose plot is inspired by a story in the bible where Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. One of the recurring themes with indie games (and one of the reasons we love them!) is that the plot and premise is often not the standard aliens in space/war/racing idea that you get in many mainstream games. Whether its drunken wizards or a love story puzzle game, it’s hard to imagine a movie based on these games.

The Binding of Isaac (the game) follows the character Isaac as he tries to avoid being sacrificed. Fleeing to his basement, the game revolves around Isaac fighting off the numerous monsters that inhabit his basement. Playing like an old-school top down dungeon crawler, each stage features a boss, numerous enemies and the chance to buy power ups and new weapons. The game feature randomly generated levels, items and bosses, greatly increasing the game’s longevity. It also includes unlockable player characters, as well as multiple endings – not bad for a game costing less than a fiver!

Wizards are just like you and me, most like to socialise and when they do they have a dance, a sing-song and maybe even a drink or two. In fact there are some among the wizarding community, just like the non-wizarding community, that on the odd occasion can underestimate the potency of an intoxicating beverage. Now being drunk and magically endowed can be rather interesting, far from being a problem, it can be rather entertaining, as you might imagine.

Drunken Wizard is an excellent indie game (it took 1st place in the Build & Win Construct 2 Contest) that begins to explore some of the scenarios an inebriated wizard might encounter. One of the main issues is how to get some distance between yourself and an angry girlfriend, that just needs some time and space to cool off a little. The game itself is a short play through but there are a couple of different routes you can take to completion. Your main attack will be to shoot fireballs but there is also a staff that can be picked up to use as a secondary weapon. Power-ups will appear when you kill enemies that help add extra burn to those fireballs. All in all, it’s a game well worth your attention and a concept that has a wealth of potential.

If you’d like to give a go, click here. And if you’d just like to take a look, check out the video below.